As the thundering firework broke the silence of the night, I held Travis in my arms at one side of the room, watching tentatively over Noah’s cot on the other end, relieved that Noah was oblivious to the noise around him. A silent monologue crossed my mind — ‘best new year ever’. I was perplexed.…
Tag: parenting
Living through the grief of a miscarriage
I recently read Suleika Jaouad’s moving memoir, ‘Between Two Kingdoms’, for the second time, after knowing that she has a cancer relapse and that she wedded the love of her life whom she wrote about in the book. I thought about the first time I read the book and how different life circumstance has been…
The invisible challenge of staying true to myself in motherhood
When a friend recently told me that he was giving himself some downtime for spiritual practices and going inward, I thought, how good was that! It is something I yearned for, a seemingly unattainable luxury in my current state of life as a mother of an 11-month-old baby. I feel that I have been regressing…
Self-care in motherhood
I took a sip of hot long black and let out a deep long breath. Seeing people and vehicles passing by in the evening sun through the floor to ceiling window, a sense of normalcy suddenly kicked in. I realised just how bizarre it was that ‘normalcy’ felt like water in a desert. Why was…
Embracing the identity of a stay home mother
In the popular book ‘Bringing Up Bebe’, the American author who raises three children in Paris compares the parenting style between the American and the French culture. According to the author, it is implied in the French culture that going back to work represents a mother’s social status and social usefulness. One of her French…
Becoming a mother
A year ago, while reading Glennon Doyle’s ‘Untamed’, I remembered pausing at a quote that says ’it’s a heavy burden for children to know that they are the reason their mother stops living her life’. It sounded cruel and yet true. As an expecting mother at that time, I took the warning to heart. Fast…